Thursday, 2 February 2017

Returnee Migration from Argentina to Croatia

MARIJETA RAJKOVIĆ IVETA, PAULA GADŽE

SUMMARY

RETURNEE MIGRATION
FROM ARGENTINA TO CROATIA

Marijeta Rajković Iveta DSc, a senior
lecturer for ethnology and cultural anthropology at the University of Zagreb's
Faculty of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and Argentinean Croatian Paula
Gadže, who has experience as a returnee, are authors of a fascinating article
that examines contemporary migrant experiences among the Croatians of South
America. The article first offers information on emigration from Croatian
ethnic areas to Argentina in the 20th century. The article aims to
depict Croatian immigrants in Buenos Aries and Rosario, the environment in
which these migrants live, what they practiced with the objective of preserving
their ethno-cultural and Croatian identity, the emigrant institutions they
established, and how they endeavoured to describe trans-migratory experiences.
The authors examine family life, the tales of the elderly members of households
about Croatia, what customs the emigrants retained, whether they prepare
Croatian cuisine and on what occasions, the names they give their children and
whether they possess artefacts from Croatia. In the second part of the article
the authors discuss the motivation behind the multiannual processes that saw
Croatians move from Argentina to Croatia after the country won its
independence, i.e. from the 1990s to the present day. They examine what these
people knew of life in Croatia and the sources of this information and in what
manner they formed an image of Croatia that intensified their desire to visit
and/or move to the country. The returnees of the first generation of migrants
are compared to the returnees from the generation of their descendants to a
"reconstructed homeland" in which they never lived. Their life in
Croatia is described, the methods in which they link Argentina and Croatia,
their impressions of the country and its people, and to what extent life in
Croatia differs from that in Argentina. The paper is based on
discussions/interviews with Croatians from Buenos Aires and Rosario who live in
Zagreb.